“So clearly that’s something we want,” he told reporters after a meeting with NATO foreign ministers in Brussels in which the conflict intruded on conversations about security in Europe and Ukraine.
“I believe it’s also something that Israel wants,” he added. He stopped short of calling for a permanent cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.
Sixteen hostages were released from Gaza on Wednesday, Israeli officials said. First came Israeli Russian captives Elena Trupanov, 50, and Irina Teti, 73; Hamas said they were let go in response to a request from the Russian government. Later, the Israel Defense Forces said 10 Israelis and four Thai nationals had been freed in the enclave and were in Israeli territory. The IDF cited the International Committee of the Red Cross, which has been escorting hostages out of Gaza.
Israeli American Liat Beinin, 49, was among those released, her father told The Washington Post.
The pause in fighting, to allow the exchange of Israeli hostages for Palestinian prisoners and detainees, began on Friday. It is set to expire early Thursday.
Officials involved in the truce negotiations, which are being mediated by Qatar, have said it was likely to be extended, at least for a few more days — continuing a tense respite for Gaza. The enclave has been bludgeoned by nearly eight weeks of Israeli airstrikes, artillery and ground fighting that have caused more than 13,300 deaths, its Health Ministry reported last week, and displaced more than 1.7 million people, according to the United Nations — 80 percent of its population.
The conflict erupted on Oct. 7, when Hamas and other militants streamed out of Gaza to attack nearby towns in Israel, leaving 1,200 people dead and grabbing hundreds of hostages.
U.N. officials who this week visited northern Gaza, a focus of Israel’s offensive, described the Jabalya refugee camp as a hellscape, cut off from humanitarian assistance for nearly 50 days.
“Buildings have just been cleaved open. A mess of masonry, twisted metal and sheet iron blown everywhere,” Thomas White, director of the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees in Gaza, said in a statement.
“As we drove through Gaza City it was like a ghost town; all the streets were deserted. The impact of heavy airstrikes and shelling was so visible. Roads are riddled with craters, complicating aid deliveries.”
Only four primary-care clinics and two hospitals in northern Gaza were fully operational on Wednesday, according to Medhat Abbas, spokesman for Gaza’s Health Ministry. He said more fuel, needed to continue providing health care, was expected to arrive in the enclave Wednesday.
The al-Ahli and al-Sahaba maternity hospitals were functioning, Abbas said, while Kamal Adwan Hospital and al-Awda Hospital had been providing “partial services” since Tuesday. He said “work is underway to provide fuel” to drugstores inside Gaza to keep vaccines — which must be stored at specific temperatures — from spoiling.
Hospitals, which Israel and the United States have said Hamas uses as strategic hubs, became a focal point of fighting in northern Gaza this month. Hamas denies the claims, as do hospital staff members. Many of the medical facilities were caught in the crossfire, stranding people sheltering inside.
The Biden administration is pressing Israel to dial back the ferocity of its assault on Gaza significantly to limit civilian casualties. U.S. officials have grown increasingly concerned about the heavy toll of the offensive. Israel says it’s focused on eliminating Hamas as a security threat.
U.S. citizens remain among the hostages held in Gaza, upping the stakes for the Biden administration. CIA Director William J. Burns has been meeting in Qatar with Israel’s spy chief and Qatar’s prime minister in hopes of extending the truce in fighting and expanding the hostage deal. Blinken planned to travel to Israel on Thursday to relay a similar message.
Blinken also planned to travel to the Israeli-occupied West Bank to meet with Palestinian leaders. He and other U.S. officials are trying to start planning for what happens after the conflict ends — “the day after, and the day after the day after,” as he put it Wednesday. The Biden administration says the beleaguered Palestinian Authority is the best entity to administer Gaza. But it’s deeply unpopular among ordinary Palestinians, many of whom see it as weak, corrupt and deferential to Israeli interests.
Foreign ministers from the Group of Seven and the high representative of the European Union also support a further extension. Israeli officials have insisted the pause will not lead to a permanent cease-fire.
“This war will end with the end of Hamas,” Eylon Levy, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister’s office, told reporters Wednesday. Israel was using the pause in fighting “to strengthen our preparations and approve battle plans for the continuation of the war to destroy Hamas in response to the October 7 massacre and we will continue when Hamas stops releasing hostages,” he said.
Beinin, 49, the U.S.-Israeli citizen released Wednesday, is one of nine Americans and a green card holder who are believed to have been among the hostages.
So far, only Beinin and Abigail Edan, a 4-year-old who saw her parents shot dead by militants on Oct. 7, have been released.
One other American woman, a 70-year-old grandmother, is also believed to be in captivity. The other U.S. hostages are men: They include a 23-year-old who was at a trance music festival and seriously injured in the Oct. 7 attack, a 35-year-old father, a 64-year-old grandfather and three young men serving in the Israel Defense Forces.
Beinin, a high school history and civics teacher with three children, was kidnapped from Kibbutz Nir Oz. Her husband, Aviv Atzili, 49, who oversaw the heavy agricultural machinery used to farm the kibbutz’s thousands of acres of peanuts, carrots and potatoes, was also kidnapped; he remains in captivity.
The couple’s oldest child, 22, was at a friend’s house the day of the rampage and managed to remain hidden. Their middle child, 20, survived by holding the door of a safe room closed, preventing the attackers from entering. Their youngest child, 18, was not on the kibbutz during the attack.
While violence in Gaza has eased, Israel has continued military operations in the occupied West Bank. Palestinian health authorities said Israeli forces killed two boys ages 15 and 8 during a raid in Jenin, a center of Palestinian resistance. Israel’s military said the operation killed two militant leaders.
The raid began shortly after 8 p.m. local time Tuesday, when Israeli armored vehicles descended on the city and surrounded the main hospital. Israeli drones whined overhead, and booms from airstrikes and the pop-pop-pop of gunfire sounded through the night and into the morning Wednesday, as Israeli troops laid siege to houses in the refugee camp and in the nearby town of al-Yamoun, according to residents and accounts shared on social media channels affiliated with Jenin’s militant groups.
For hours overnight and into the morning, Israeli forces blocked ambulances from accessing neighborhoods in which they were operating, or from entering the city’s public hospital, according to Mahmoud al-Saadi, head of the Palestine Red Crescent Society branch in Jenin.
The armored vehicles left the hospital by midmorning. In the early afternoon, ambulances rushed two boys to the emergency department: one, bleeding from a bullet wound to his head, and a second, several minutes later, lying pale and still on a stretcher, as medics frantically performed CPR.
The Ramallah-based Palestinian Health Ministry later announced that both had died of their wounds. The ministry identified them as Adam Othman al-Ghul, 8, and Basel Abu al-Wafa, 15.
Two CCTV videos verified by The Washington Post show the moment when the two boys were shot. The footage shows that Ghul and Abu al-Wafa were with two other boys near an intersection. The four boys face in the same direction, at times walking backward to keep their eyes on what or whoever is just past the camera’s view.
Abu al-Wafa holds an object roughly the size of his palm in his right hand. As he moves toward the middle of the road, he appears to try several times to light the object, looking down at it and bringing his hands together as if he’s using a lighter. The Post was not able to confirm what Abu al-Wafa held. He continues to hold it as the shooting begins.
The IDF said in a statement that “a number of suspects hurled explosive devices toward IDF soldiers. The soldiers responded with live fire toward the suspects and hits were identified.”
Israeli security forces said in a joint statement Wednesday that they had killed Muhammad Zubeidi, whom they identified as “the Jenin camp commander” and “a senior Islamic Jihad operative.”
Zubeidi was involved in two shooting attacks in May that together killed one Israeli civilian and injured another as well as four IDF soldiers, the forces said. Another militant, Hussam Hanoun, was also killed in the raid.
Fahim reported from Beirut, Slater from Williamstown, Mass., Parker from Jenin, West Bank, and Mellen from Washington. Annabelle Timsit and Miriam Berger in Jerusalem, Hazem Balousha in Amman, Jordan, and Meg Kelly in London contributed to this report.
